Social Media is a Game Changer

According to a recent BtoB Magazine survey, 78.5 percent of business marketers plan to significantly increase their online marketing budgets and 30 percent said that over half of their marketing budget will be spent online.

As an insurance marketing firm we support legacy marketing activities like telemarketing as well as digital marketing modalities and we are seeing more marketing dollars diverted from traditional advertising and direct marketing to SEO, SEM, email, and now social media marketing. The significance of this transition is truly a game changer in terms of defining the lines between business-to-business and business-to consumer marketing.

Think about it for a moment; how many email addresses do you have now?

Do you have a personal email?

When you sign up for a newsletter do you use you business email address or your personal email address?

Most of us are connected 24/7 either by a handheld device, laptop, or iPad. What hasn’t changed is you have to be where your buyers are. What has changed is they are mostly on the internet, which explains the huge jump in the internet marketing budgets. Social media allows you to join the conversation and to pull other people into the conversation. It provides the perfect forum to promote what you are doing by creating a buzz.

All you need to do to get started is share your expertise and post it to relevant groups on any social media site. Start with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Create blog, set up a Facebook page, start tweeting. Embracing these new tools puts you where the buyers are. So, a blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a Linked-In account. It’s like being able to attend four networking meetings at once.

What are you doing to facilitate your online marketing effort? What’s working?